Where do you buy your tools?

[Monkey Mark]

As the title says really.

I'm just starting out in the world of woodworking, just as a hobby to learn new things.

As its a hobby (no financial gain expected) and I'm (always) on a tight budget, I'm looking for basic tools such as saws, chisels, mallets etc, marking out tools such as square, sliding bevel etc and maybe a table or band saw.

I know buying cheap often means buying twice but I think some tools are better than nothing and I can buy better replacements as time goes on and funds permit.

So, any recommendations on good sites to look at?

Also, what would you consider to be the "Must have" tools when starting out?

Cheers, Mark

 

[dc_ni]

Keep an eye on the Lidl specials that they do on a Monday and Thursday for when they have the DIY stuff in.

 

[NickWelford]

Quite a few bargains to be had at car boot sales, but you need to be early. Get decent sharpening equipment, whether that be grinder, diamond stones, oil stones or emery paper, you will need it from the start.

 

[Glynne]

Having bought my fair share of cheap tools over the years, I'd say that it is a false economy and you'd be better going for reasonable quality. You don't have to go for the expensive Lie Neilsen, Veritas etc. brands but decent tools are a lot easier to use especially if you're learning.
To start, what are you likely to be making? If you can think of a few starter projects (easier said than done) then you can chose the tools to suit. Boxes are often a good start as you can learn to hand dimension your timber and have a variety of joints to try - dovetail, mitre, M&T etc.
Sites:-
This one - For Sale forum
Axminster
Rutlands
Woodworkers Workshop (Peter Sefton)
Workshop Heaven (Matthew Platt)
But I'd be inclined to decide what you want and then search these sites and the Internet generally.
I think Workshop Heaven have a "starter set" which will give you an idea of the tools even if you don't buy from Matthew.
Hope this helps but I'd guess you'll get many suggestions as tools selection and use are very much a subjective topic.
You will need to think about sharpening your tools (probably before using them) and beware that this is a hornets nest of a topic on the forum so have a search of previous threads before putting on a crash hat and posting any new ones.

 

[Monkey Mark]

Keep an eye on the Lidl specials that they do on a Monday and Thursday for when they have the DIY stuff in.

Good Idea, I am partial to and Aldo or Lidl special!

Quite a few bargains to be had at car boot sales, but you need to be early. Get decent sharpening equipment, whether that be grinder, diamond stones, oil stones or emery paper, you will need it from the start.

Good comment regarding the sharpening. I do have some diamond stones and a plane/chisel guide as well as an oilstone that was my grandfathers hiding in my garage somewhere.
I'll stick to youtube for tips on sharpening :mrgreen:

Having bought my fair share of cheap tools over the years, I'd say that it is a false economy and you'd be better going for reasonable quality. You don't have to go for the expensive Lie Neilsen, Veritas etc. brands but decent tools are a lot easier to use especially if you're learning.
To start, what are you likely to be making? If you can think of a few starter projects (easier said than done) then you can chose the tools to suit. Boxes are often a good start as you can learn to hand dimension your timber and have a variety of joints to try - dovetail, mitre, M&T etc.
Sites:-
This one - For Sale forum
Axminster
Rutlands
Woodworkers Workshop (Peter Sefton)
Workshop Heaven (Matthew Platt)
But I'd be inclined to decide what you want and then search these sites and the Internet generally.
I think Workshop Heaven have a "starter set" which will give you an idea of the tools even if you don't buy from Matthew.
Hope this helps but I'd guess you'll get many suggestions as tools selection and use are very much a subjective topic.
You will need to think about sharpening your tools (probably before using them) and beware that this is a hornets nest of a topic on the forum so have a search of previous threads before putting on a crash hat and posting any new ones.

Hmmm, what do I want to make? To be 100% honest I'm not sure. Small items like boxes, trinkets, maybe ornaments and most likely some garden furniture for our expanding family.

I do intend to get a lathe at some point but don't have the space at this moment in times.

I do have a router (and a cheap table which will be getting replaced) and find I very much enjoy the versatility of it. Even if I have only done simple things like a chopping board so far.

I have a feeling that my wife, who is considerably more artistic than I, would like to try some scrolling and pyrography too.

 

[skippy75]

The wet and dry sandpaper sharpening method is probably the cheapest way to sharpen tools. Even brand new tools will need sharpening so its an important thing to look into.

Amazon can be quite a good place to look for cheap tools as you get loads of reviews for each item so you can see if they fall apart after the first use or if they are ok.

The most important 'tool' for me is a stable work bench with a vice. That could be a table with a clamped on vice, a work mate style thing or something else.

 

[Mar_mite]

All my 'nice' chisels are old ones from eBay, I have a full set, mostly marples, some sorby and a couple of unknowns. I didn't go above £10 per chisel, some were only one or two pounds. They are lovely to use. And I don't care that they are not a matching set.

 

[Racers]

Car boots are very good, should be starting to get busy sometime soon.

I know its morbid but old people die over the winter, so things cleared out as soon as the weather warms up and taken to car boots, it gives you chance to buy some good old tools and give some money to the family's.

Pete

 

[graduate_owner]

I once read in a copy of the 'Whole Earth' catalogue the following wise words

Cheap tools are sh!t. They may not smell but they are stinkers to work with.

I have made the mistake of buying cheap on several occasions and, of course, regretted it. However i have some Aldi / Lidl bits for occasional use and have not been disappointed. Things like table saw though, I bought good quality (second hand). As has been said, car boots etc can result in good buys.

Good luck with the hobby.

K

 

[dp341]

I bought and renovated old tools from ebay, carboots, junk shops etc. they are great but I spent a lot of time renovating tools instead of working wood. I got left a chunk of money in a will and decided that buying some quality tools would be a good legacy, something I could hand on to my kids and would enable me to get woodworking, instead of tool renovating.

I got some quansheng (thanks Mathew), some Lie Nielsen (thanks classic handtools) and some veritas (thanks Pete). They're great, minimal setup time, no fettling, great finish, not better than my old stanley's etc. but a lot less effort to get to the same place.

You pays your money, you takes your choice. Both options work, one is more effort to get right, the other more money. Just decide your priority and do it.

cheers

Daniel

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Not quite a direct answer, but an indirect one - it might pay dividends to buy a couple of books. Both are published by Lost Art Press, and are available here - http://www.classichandtools.com/acatalo ... Press.html . The first is 'The Essential Woodworker' by Robert Wearing, which is a most useful book to have on hand when starting out. It'll help a lot with planes and planing, joint cutting, simple projects like a stool or small table, casework, and lots of useful odds and ends like how to fit hinges. The second is 'The Anarchist's Tool Chest' by Christopher Schwarz, which is a list of the tools you REALLY need, and the attributes of a good example of each tool. There's also instructions on how to build a traditional toolchest, which may not immediately appeal, but might make a challenging and useful project in due course.

You may decide to add a machine or two, or hand-held power tools. They can help cut down on the 'grunt' work, but in general can't do the finer stuff that you need handtools for.

As Skippy75 said, a useful first project is a bench. It doesn't have to be fancy - can always make a mark 2 version with lessons learned later on - but rigid and as heavy as reasonably possible helps a lot to make jobs like planing easier. Quite a respectable bench can be made up from builders' merchants joinery-grade softwood with the underframe screwed together. Fancy hardwoods mortice-and-tenonned together can wait until you've built up a bit of confidence and experience.

 

[AndyT]

The answer used to be "go to a proper tool shop and pay a fair price for trusted brands" but the number of specialist tool shops with stock you can see and ask about has declined hugely in the last decade or two, as so much business goes online.

There is a good 'sticky' listing of major online retailers at the top of the Buying Advice section and it may well include names which although obvious to many will be new to you as a beginner:

https://www.ukworkshop.co.uk/forums...online-tool-store-heaven-e-commerce-t960.html

 

[beech1948]

i buy lots of old tools eg chisels, planes, brace etc etc from flea markets, car boots and ebay or gumtree. It means I have to do the restoration work but that is now down to a fine art and does not take long.

I buy bigger systems eg P/T, Table Saw from here or from Ebay or if I'm lucky from a friend or an acquaintance. I go for better than hobby kit eg I have a Wadkin P/T and morticer both bought in a grimy, greasy, oily rusty state and restored. I find the quality and accuracy much better than hobby graded kit and ultimately it turns out to be cheaper if I exclude my labour costs by a huge margin. I'm semi retired but work 4 days a week.

My only new acquisition is a Felder CF 741 S professional bought 9 yrs ago and which has been superb. If you want to know why I also have a P/T from Wadkin its because I sometimes have a colleague working with me to knock out bigger jobs faster.

I have found Ebay to be problematic in that the murky pictures, devious practices of a few cause major issues. I have bought stuff which was not as described and only have a 50% success rate in getting cash back. However, I have become expert at fixing the problems and rebuilding tools. You have to.

I seldom use Axminster these days as they have become too expensive. I do buy from Dictum and a few other German tool shops online and find prices are a little less, postage is acceptable and time to delivery is as fast as from the UK. I don't buy from the US unless there is no other option and the twice I have done this I saved a large sum of money compared to UK prices which seem to be somewhat inflated.

I have bought from Japanese Ebay 14 chisels in twos and threes to make up a set and that has gone well with good value items.

Take care to look at the quality of what you are buying. Always look at the TOTAL costs of the purchase before buying.

Al

 

[Fat ferret]

Ebay and found/given. As mentioned Lidl can have some good stuff, particularly the chisels and the 30 quid cordless drill. I'd get mid range stuff and learn to sharpen it. For this you need a grinder and some kind of stone (OIL!) Second hand tools can be great, the tools of yesteryear were made to use everyday whereas todays cheap stuff is for DIYers.

Build yourself a bench and some tool boxes. In the beginning you might think you need to mortice and dovetail everything but you can just screw your bench and tool boxes together. I like this design of tool box even though it weighs a ton when full. You can use it on sight as a mini workbench and clamp stuff to it for planning, you might not be planning to do any sight work but friends and family will expect you to once they think your a joiner!
https://flic.kr/p/qgbUS6

These are my tools plus a few more saws and power tools. Nothing expensive just learn to look after and use your tools.
https://flic.kr/p/qgc4y4

 

[heimlaga]

The cheapest way to get a high end set of chisels is to buy old chisels one by one where you find them. I have found good chisels at flea markets and farm auctions and boot sales and even at the local scrap yards and at the municipal dump while it was still open to scroungers. I "set" of chisels don't need to be all from the same maker with matching handles as long as the general type and quality is roughly equal. Most old "cast steel" chisels are good. You can whittle your own handles and cut the hoops for the handles from thin walled iron or hard copper pipe using hacksaw and file.

Rubber mallets are pretty cheap at any hardware store and they do the job well enough to make good substitute for a fancy joiner's mallet.

Layout tools can be found secondhand but new ones of decent quality aren't too expensive nor hard to find so I would suggest buying new maybe except for the sliding square. If you stumble on an old sliding square with cast iron body they tend to be better than most sold today. Old mitre gauges and bevel gauges also tend to be worth buying if you stumble on them.

All of my hand planes have been bought secondhand. All of them have been in need of restoration. I bought one or two that was just too far gone to restore before I learned where the limit is to my ability. I suggest that you look for a secondhand plane in good condition for your first. When you have gotten accustomed to the use and function of a plane you will be more competent to judge which ones are restorable.
Both Veritas and Clifton make very good new planes if you can afford them.

For some onsite work I use ordinary cheap saws of the kind that can be bought at hardware stores. In my workshop I use old high quality saws found secondhand. They cost next to nothing and once restored they are very good. I sharpen them when they get dull. Daddy taught me how to sharpen saws when I was 16 so sharpening has never been any kind of a problem to me but if you have nobody around to teach you at the moment then you should start with some hard tooth saws until you learn sharpening and can get better ones. You don't need too many learning curves at once.

Are you mechanically minded? What size of saw bench or band saw would fit into the space you have? How much time do you have on hand?
There is no "one size fits all" solution for machinery. I prefere to buy elderly good quality machinery secondhand and rebuild them myself but that isn't the right way to go for everybody.

Good luck!

 

[Kalimna]

One small issue that hasn't been directly mentioned in this thread yet, but alluded to, is that in buying secondhand tools from car boot sales, for example, a complete beginner can find it difficult to assess said tool. Perhaps not so much for chisels, because just about any will work well enough on wood, but a stinker of a plane will either take so long to fettle that you will get fed up and frustrated, or it will never reach a good working condition, in which case you will get fed up and frustrated.
I think it is better to get much fewer 'good' new tools (which may actually only cost a little more than 'good' used tools), and as experienced is gained and you want to expand the toolset, then scour for old 'bargain' tools.
A secondary problem is that if you ask ten woodworkers what to buy (and in what condition) you will generally end up with ten different opinions, some being polar opposites of each other.

Either way, good luck,
Adam S

 

[HexusOdy]

When I was just starting out I discovered quite quickly that the world of woodworking tools barely changes.

Sure there are innovators like Festool but by and large a table saw today is the same as 30 years ago (or more). The same could be said for most things.

So I would suggest you check your Ebays and Gumtree's for well looked after machines. You can get some real bargains.

 

[Monkey Mark]

Not quite a direct answer, but an indirect one - it might pay dividends to buy a couple of books. Both are published by Lost Art Press, and are available here - http://www.classichandtools.com/acatalo ... Press.html . The first is 'The Essential Woodworker' by Robert Wearing, which is a most useful book to have on hand when starting out. It'll help a lot with planes and planing, joint cutting, simple projects like a stool or small table, casework, and lots of useful odds and ends like how to fit hinges. The second is 'The Anarchist's Tool Chest' by Christopher Schwarz, which is a list of the tools you REALLY need, and the attributes of a good example of each tool. There's also instructions on how to build a traditional toolchest, which may not immediately appeal, but might make a challenging and useful project in due course.

You may decide to add a machine or two, or hand-held power tools. They can help cut down on the 'grunt' work, but in general can't do the finer stuff that you need handtools for.

As Skippy75 said, a useful first project is a bench. It doesn't have to be fancy - can always make a mark 2 version with lessons learned later on - but rigid and as heavy as reasonably possible helps a lot to make jobs like planing easier. Quite a respectable bench can be made up from builders' merchants joinery-grade softwood with the underframe screwed together. Fancy hardwoods mortice-and-tenonned together can wait until you've built up a bit of confidence and experience.

I've had a look and those books look very interesting. Definitely something I will purchase when I can.

A bench is one of the first things I will make, a little more on this lower down.

The cheapest way to get a high end set of chisels is to buy old chisels one by one where you find them. I have found good chisels at flea markets and farm auctions and boot sales and even at the local scrap yards and at the municipal dump while it was still open to scroungers. I "set" of chisels don't need to be all from the same maker with matching handles as long as the general type and quality is roughly equal. Most old "cast steel" chisels are good. You can whittle your own handles and cut the hoops for the handles from thin walled iron or hard copper pipe using hacksaw and file.

Rubber mallets are pretty cheap at any hardware store and they do the job well enough to make good substitute for a fancy joiner's mallet.

Layout tools can be found secondhand but new ones of decent quality aren't too expensive nor hard to find so I would suggest buying new maybe except for the sliding square. If you stumble on an old sliding square with cast iron body they tend to be better than most sold today. Old mitre gauges and bevel gauges also tend to be worth buying if you stumble on them.

All of my hand planes have been bought secondhand. All of them have been in need of restoration. I bought one or two that was just too far gone to restore before I learned where the limit is to my ability. I suggest that you look for a secondhand plane in good condition for your first. When you have gotten accustomed to the use and function of a plane you will be more competent to judge which ones are restorable.
Both Veritas and Clifton make very good new planes if you can afford them.

For some onsite work I use ordinary cheap saws of the kind that can be bought at hardware stores. In my workshop I use old high quality saws found secondhand. They cost next to nothing and once restored they are very good. I sharpen them when they get dull. Daddy taught me how to sharpen saws when I was 16 so sharpening has never been any kind of a problem to me but if you have nobody around to teach you at the moment then you should start with some hard tooth saws until you learn sharpening and can get better ones. You don't need too many learning curves at once.

Are you mechanically minded? What size of saw bench or band saw would fit into the space you have? How much time do you have on hand?
There is no "one size fits all" solution for machinery. I prefere to buy elderly good quality machinery secondhand and rebuild them myself but that isn't the right way to go for everybody.

Good luck!

I do have a couple of planes, just basic Stanley ones that were gifted to me in a poor state. After a little bit of time watching youtube videos one now works very nicely (until someone used it and chipped the blade :evil: ) and the other is nearly there.

As for mechanically minded, yes I am. I'm not too bad with things like that usually. The space I have will be roughly half of my garage (a single garage but slightly wider and longer than a standard one). Space will be an issue but hopefully not a too restrictive one. I'm currently clearing out the garage so i can then decide on the best layout and making some storage and workstations accordingly.

I would be willing to take on a project of older machinery that needs some tlc if I came across something at the right (i.e. cheap :mrgreen: ) price. I'm not in any major hurry so I could take my time fixing things up. Actually, I'd prefer some of the older machinery as its definitely built to last.



I'd like to say thank you to everyone who has taken the time to respond to this thread. There has been some great answers with good information and links for which I am very grateful. Cheers =D>